I can't think of a president who has been overburdened by a knowledge of economics.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that having extensive knowledge of economics can be more of a burden than a benefit for a president.
In this quote, Paul Samuelson reflects on the idea that presidents often face complex and challenging economic decisions, and that being well-versed in economics can complicate their decision-making process. The implication is that a lack of deep economic knowledge might sometimes enable leaders to make decisions without being overwhelmed by the complexities that such knowledge entails.
In practice
In a political debate discussing the role of economic advisors in presidential decision-making.
To a person of analytical ability, perceptive enough to realise that mathematical equipment was a powerful sword in economics, the world of economics was his or her oyster in 1935. The terrain was strewn with beautiful theorems begging to be picked up and arranged in unified order.
My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.
Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.
My family was well off but not rich. I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a hundred different employers and wouldn't get a nibble. That was a disequilibrium system. I realized that the ordinary old-fashioned Euclidean geometry didn't apply.
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
There's nothing in Keynesian economics that would allow you to solve stagflation. But there's nothing in neoclassical economics that would allow you to solve stagflation, either.
In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.
I started my political life in the Resistance. It was there that I had my first responsibility.
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
Republicans and others who are in anguish over the possibility of socialized medicine ought to have to explain their ideology to a mother with a sick newborn. They ought to have to explain how this nation can debate health care and not mention how abysmal ours is.
A Republic, if you can keep it.
As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
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